While Siri and Google Now are well-established smartphone features, it is in the smart home that voice control systems will live out their full potential. Smart TVs, smart refrigerators, smart plugs, and more will extend the reach and simplicity of managing the smart home environment using voice. With ABI Research forecasting more than 120 million voice-enabled devices to ship annually by 2021, voice control, which combines speech recognition and natural language processing, is quickly becoming the key user interface within the smart home.

The Siemens Building Technologies Division and Capgemini are set to put in place a cloud based services platform comprising asset management and analytics technology. The two entities are adding to the development of the web-based Energy & Sustainability Navigator platform that has saved 10.5 million tons of CO2 per year for customers. Both companies are looking to ensure corporate real estate owners see business results and meet energy efficiency goals, while making the best of the lifecycle potential of their customers’ real estate assets.

There are two sides to the coin: security and data privacy, both of which have the potential to undermine confidence in the entire IoT concept.With regards to security, there is a whole host of situations where an IoT device or system could be compromised. Think of last year’s hacks of a Jeep on a motorway or a power station in Ukraine. Thankfully, no lives were lost in either, but it is no stretch to imagine the havoc that could be unleashed.On the issue of data privacy, few connected devices will have a user interface through which an operator or vendor can inform the user about the terms and conditions of use, where their personal data may be stored and how it may be used, and thereby gain the user’s acceptance of those terms.

Despite all the potential that we are already seeing from the Internet of Things (IoT) and the ever increasing number of devices (aka “things”) that are connected to it, there is a much bigger world out there just waiting to be connected. Samsung Electronics announced a plan for a dedicated wireless IoT network that will be available across Korea by the middle of the year. The recently announced contract with SK Telecom will test the network in Korea’s fourth largest city, Daegu, next month. The test will

Many developers are chomping at the bit to become experts at current breakthrough technologies in sensors, embedded systems, mesh networking protocols, big data analytics—all the elements of what’s popularly known as the Internet of Things (IoT). Many CxO-level executives are also interested in the IoT and how they can broaden their grasp of its potential. But if you’re a developer trying to get corporate buy-in for an IoT project, you need to understand that the pitch is somewhat different from one for a